Biden’s lenient border policies are welcoming a new threat: tuberculosis.

President Biden’s open-border policies enable deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to infiltrate our country.

However, they have also paved the way for tuberculosis, a silent killer, to cross the border.

America’s woke public-health authorities prioritize equity — redistributing health resources among racial groups — over preventing a disease that the United States had almost eradicated from becoming a threat once again.

Reported cases of tuberculosis have increased by 34% from 2020 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and continue to rise.

More than three-quarters of the cases are foreign-born individuals who contracted the disease in their home countries or while traveling through countries with high TB rates.

The TB incidence rate in Haiti is 60 times higher than in the United States.

In New York City, the top destination for migrants, the incidence of TB is 2½ times the national average and increasing.

An overwhelming 89% of TB patients in New York City are foreign born. The most affected neighborhoods are Flushing/Clearview areas of Queens, Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

According to the city’s most recent Annual Tuberculosis Summary, Chinese nationals account for the largest group with reported TB cases.

Globally, TB has surpassed COVID-19 as the leading infectious disease killer on Earth.

While there is no effective vaccine for TB, most cases can be treated with antibiotics — but only if taken daily, without interruption, for several months or longer.

Western Europe, Scandinavia, and North America are all seeing increasing TB rates as migrants from poorer countries, where tuberculosis is common, arrive.

British health authorities are warning the public about the distinct cough associated with TB, while public-health authorities in Europe are discussing how to screen TB carriers affordably and prevent them from infecting the local population.

An individual can carry latent TB for years and then suddenly develop an active and highly contagious case after resettling in a new country, spreading it through coughing and sneezing.

However, in the United States, the CDC is emphasizing health equity over prevention and public education, neglecting the prevention of the re-emergence of a disease that was nearly eliminated.

In all of the agency’s reports, there is no mention of the cause of the increase in TB cases: an open border.

Our immigration laws do offer a mechanism to combat this dangerous disease.

Immigrants who enter the country legally and apply for green cards undergo TB screening with the IGRA blood test.

Latent carriers are not barred from entering the United States; they are allowed in and referred to a local health department for follow-up treatment.

Although voluntary and inconsistent, this process is better than nothing.

Migrants entering the country illegally or through Biden’s online parole app receive no screening whatsoever.

The CDC is inactive, failing to screen and isolate infected individuals before they bring tuberculosis to communities across the United States.

The agency seems to have forgotten its mission of “Control and Prevention.”

Consider the case of a Chinese migrant who crossed the border illegally in April with active, drug-resistant TB.

Despite being diagnosed as “highly positive” on July 23, she was not isolated and instead was transferred between immigration processing facilities in California and Louisiana, exposing hundreds.

Louisiana is now suing federal authorities to keep the exposed migrants detained until they are medically cleared, with the state Attorney General warning about the threat to American citizens from untested migrants.

Thousands of unaccompanied minor children with latent TB are being released into the United States instead of being kept in Health and Human Services shelters for the necessary months of antibiotic treatment.

CDC data shows a 42% increase in TB incidence among children aged 5 to 14 in the last year alone.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alexandro Mayorkas on November 1, urging precautions against this disease influx.

Lee warned that TB is spreading rapidly through the millions of unscreened illegal immigrants released into the interior of the United States.

While the number of reported cases this year is relatively small, just under 10,000, the increasing trend is concerning.

The United States successfully fought against TB in the 20th century and emerged victorious.

Americans should not have to succumb to this disease due to open borders.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.